Candylands Journey Review
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Candylands Journey
Can this game hit the sweet spot or does it hit the sour notes?
Overview
The Good
- Lovely pixel art
- It's short
The Not-So-Good
- Lack of information
- Very little story information
Story
You play as a young witch who attends the Magic University. You witness the "Pastry Witches" stealing the heart of magic, which in turn sets you off on a journey to rescue the gem from the evil witches.
Gameplay
With reactive controls and multiple wands to choose from, like most platformers your objective is to get from point A to point B whilst collecting coins and gems. Unfortunately though, there's very little in the way of instructions or explanations anywhere. This means you don't know if what you're doing is correct or not. There are power-ups in the form of hats that you wear to assist your journey. Outside of 3 of them (super jump, speed & levitate) I can't really say what they all did as they seemed to have little effect. Your character is responsive but the jump is a little spongy. I also found a bug on the puzzles where you can jump too early and it doesn't register the input, which is very frustrating - it's also the same for some of the bouncing mushrooms. The enemies are very simple, too simple to be honest - they don't really offer a challenge. This could be a good thing if you wanted to get your child into 2D platformers, but as an adult there's very little difficulty. Boss battles are similar - there aren't any stages to fights, which means the patterns stay the same. Short of the first pattern you learn, this leaves them feeling flat. Without the challenge there's no buzz that you'd often associate with boss fights.
Visuals, Design & Music
The pixel art is really well done and level design is fun but too repetitive. The hardest platforming is frustrating rather than difficult. There's some great nods to Sonic and Mario with hidden areas and traversing the maps, but ultimately these hidden areas are too obvious and easy to get to. The game also suffers from a lack of information. I didn't realize you could even change wands until the 5th level. When in the shop there was no description to the items you were buying. There are icons which helped in the shop but it still wasn't clear. Because of this I found I needed to backtrack to the first 5 levels at the end of the game - this is because you need all 16 puzzle pieces to access the final level but it doesn't tell you that. Music-wise it isn't bad but it isn't good either, it's a little repetitive.
Performance
Performance on the Switch is flawless. The loading times are short with a smooth frame rate throughout. It's not the most taxing game for this system though and outside of the bug with jumping I mentioned earlier, it's fine.
Value
The game is currently priced at £8.99 and regional equivalents. It's around 2-3 hours in length. Honestly this feels expensive. I think £4.99 would be more suitable for this kind of game.
Score Breakdown
Overall Score
Final Verdict
I didn't hate this game but I feel it doesn't know its own identity. The level design pulls the score up quite a bit. If you have children and you want them to play a kind and forgiving modern take on the classics, then play it with them. Ultimately that's the identity crisis. Too simple and easy for adults and too ambiguous for children without experienced gamers to help. Ultimately I think they missed the sweet spot by some margin and should have aimed it towards either end of the market, not getting caught in the middle.
Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this product from https://www.keymailer.co